Reviews

Although I never saw the show, reading through some of the cast members names is like watching the credits roll on "The Untouchables". Joseph Mell, Stanley Adams, Chuck Hicks, Robert Carricart, Bernie Fein, Dick Wilson, Norman Alden, Herman Rudin, Bartlett Robinson, Dick Bakalyan and others apparently worked for Desilu while toiling for California National. Allen H. Miner even directed episodes of both series. In fact, if I'm reading the notes correctly, Chuck Hicks (who later did stunts on CHiPS) even played the same character: Agent LaMarr Kane during TLL season one's "The Billy Boy 'Rockabye' Creel Story". The Kane character was killed off in "The Untouchables" episode entitled "The Tri State Gang", along with "Big Bill Phillips" (described to perfection by Walter Winchell as "a hulking six-foot-four ox of a man") played by "Skipper" Alan Hale. The one glaring omission is WHICH network aired "The Lawless Years". For the life of me I simply don't recall this series, despite the fact it ran three seasons. Of course that is likely because for me, at that age, "The Untouchables" was about the only thing that REALLY mattered on the 21" screen of the B&W Westinghouse console in our living room.

This "made for TV movie" was actually a 2-part episode titled "The Unhired Assassin". It was one of two "2-parters", the other being "The Big Train", a fictionalized account of the otherwise uneventful transfer of Al Capone from the Federal pen at Atlanta to the then new Alcatraz. There is actually a disclaimer that airs prior to the episode acknowledging that was indeed no misbehavior on the part of the prison guards as the episode(s) would suggest. Another popular myth: the voiceover introduction for the show(s) was done by Executive Producer Quinn Martin himself. It was actually Les Lampson, a weekend newscaster seen on KTTV in Los Angeles. Lampson retired from local TV in 1979.